Business News

A team of engineering students from NUI Galway have scooped a major European award for a super-efficient vehicle.

They took first place for technical innovation at Europe’s prestigious Shell Eco-marathon Europe competition.

The Galway energy-efficient car (Geec, left) is said to be Ireland’s ‘greenest’ with a claimed range of 350km on just one unit, or kilowatt-hour (kWh), of electricity.

That, they say, means a drive from Galway to Dublin would cost less than 15c worth of electricity. Put another way, it’s calculated as the equivalent of 10,000mpg (diesel).

University president Professor Ciarán ó hÓgartaigh said the students had brought talent and ingenuity to bear on one of the most important challenges of our time – energy-efficient transportation.

A total of 149 top European engineering schools built cars and sent teams to the Shell Eco-marathon Europe in London. In all, more than 2,000 students, from Morocco to Siberia, took part. The award recognises the single best innovation on any car across all competition categories.

It is claimed to be the world’s toughest test for ultra-efficient vehicles. Teams battle in a 15km race where efficiency, not speed, is all that matters.